If looks could kill: Anthony LaPaglia, centre, featured as the head of a completely different family in the movie Mental, starring opposite Toni Collette.

LaPaglia will play Bill, ex-CIA and patriarch of the Hamilton clan, while Felicity Huffman will play his wife Margie Hamilton, according to a story on industry website Deadline.com.

Michael Stahl-David and Patrick Heusinger will play the adult sons of the Hamilton clan who are also in the government assassin business.

LaPaglia was recently seen in Underground: The Julian Assange Story shown in Australia on Network Ten last October. The TV movie is set for a local cinema release in Australia in March and April.

LaPaglia joins a swell of Australians to have booked gigs in high-profile US pilots this season.

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It has just been announced that Rachel Griffiths will star in the new NBC series Camp, which is to be filmed in Australia, while Red Dog's Rachael Taylor has signed on for a still-untitled political thriller that will also star former X-Files actress Gillian Anderson.

Oscar darling Jacki Weaver, meanwhile, has landed a role in new comedy The McCarthys as the matriarch of a sports-crazed Irish-Catholic Boston family.

And Toni Collette will play a Washington surgeon in Hostages, whose connection to the US president leaves her family in danger.